American Cheeses

When the settlers first came to America, they encountered a country whose inhabitants did not have dairy products as part of their diet. From northern Europe, Scandinavia and Britain, early settlers brought not only their own cheesemaking traditions but their dairy herds as well.

I love driving through Vermont, New York State and Pennsylvania, their prosperous farms snug in fertile valleys, with the descendants of those dairy herds contentedly grazing, the Holsteins, the Frisians, the Jerseys and Guernseys, and the Brown Swiss cows. It is hard to imagine more supremely perfect conditions for the making of cheese at its best.